


Falling Just To Rise (I Will Rise Like A Phoenix)

by mihrsuri



Series: Jewish Hotch Series [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jewish, Biracial Character, Character(s) of Color, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Community: purimgifts, F/M, Female Character of Color, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jewish Holidays, Pesach | Passover, Rape Recovery, Reclaiming your Heritage, Team as Family, Trauma, Unrefridgerating Awesome Women, alternate universe - haley lives, biracial identity, team mom hotch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 02:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri
Summary: A year after Foyet Aaron & Haley Hotchner host a Seder and Hotch begins to find his past and remake himself all at once - in hope and love and new life.





	Falling Just To Rise (I Will Rise Like A Phoenix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Storyteller1358](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storyteller1358/gifts).



> Title is from Phoenix by Molly Sanden. With a million thank you's to my recipient for giving me the opportunity to write this story - one that is deeply personal to me in a number of ways. Thank you so much and I hope very much it works for you. <3\. A content note - this story references trauma of various kinds (rape, child abuse and denial of culture) but not explicitly so.

It's after Foyet, really after Foyet that Hotch decides to hold a Seder. After he and Haley have reconciled, slowly and carefully. They've talked, talked a lot about what needs to happen and the slowness. It's good and honest and sometimes the hardest thing he's ever done, realising that kindness to himself, admitting when he needs to be held is good for other people - it might still feel horrible but it is good. It is good to be alive with Haley and with Jack and with his team. He has his family around him and he...he wants to make it count. 

His mother had named him for Aaron, the brother of Moses ("It fits you my star, always standing for Sean. You stand for so many people" she'd said (Sean had been named by their father after he'd put his foot down about it all)). He'd buried it along with everything else after she'd died because it had hurt too much. 

And his father, his father had told both boys to forget her. To forget about it all. Not that Hotch Senior hadn't thrown it in Hotch's face at every opportunity - every slur you could imagine and then some more because John Hotchner VII had made the mistake of marrying a Jewish woman from Syria and the shame had burned into him more and more. 

(His father had been angrier than Aaron had ever seen when he'd found him placing pebbles on his mother's grave). 

Hotch remembers but he remembers too little. He remembers the Seder they would have, just the three of them and his mothers parents - the haroset made of dried fruits, Sean throwing the afikomen over the shoulder, the kindly voice of his grandfather as he read the Haggadah and the way his grandmother would sing to them in languages that he no longer knows. Lamb and rice and pistachio cookies. And he had forgotten them. He will not forget again.

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
